WILHELM

SCHERER (1841-1886)  , German philologist and historian of literature, was born at Schonborn in Lower Austria on the 26th of April 1841 . He was educated at the academic gymnasium at Vienna and afterwards at the university, where he was the favourite pupil of the distinguished Germanist, Karl Viktor Mi.illenhoff (1818—1884) . Having taken the degree of doctor philosophiae, he became Privatdozent for German language and literature in 1864 . In 1868 he was appointed ordinary professor, and in 1872 received a call in a like capacity to Strassburg, and in 1877 to Berlin, where in 1884 he was made member of the Academy of Sciences . He died at Berlin on the 6th of August 1886 . Scherer's literary activity falls into three categories: in Vienna he was the philologist, at Strassburg the professor of literature and in Berlin the author . His earliest work was a biography of the great philologist Jakob Grimm (1865, and ed . 1885) ; he next, in con-junction with his former teacher Mullenhoff, published Denkmaler deutscher Poesie and Prose aus dem 8. bis 12 . Jahrhundert (1864, 3rd ed . 1892) . His first great work was, however, Zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache (Berlin, 1868; 3rd ed., 189o), being a history of the German language with especial reference to phonetic laws . He contributed the section on Alsatian literature to O .

Lorenz's Geschichte

des Elsasses (1871, 3rd ed . 1886) . Other important works are Geistliche Poeten der deutschen Kaiserzeit (Strassburg, 1874–1875) ; Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung im zz. and 12 . Jahrhundert (1875); and Vortrage and Aufsatze zur Geschichte des geistigen Lebens in Deutschland and Osterreich (1874) . Scherer's best-known work is his history of German literature, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur (Berlin, 1883; Ioth ed., 1905; English translation by Mrs F . C . Conybeare, 1883; new ed., 1906) . This work is distinguished by the clearness with which details are co-ordinated with a general and comprehensive survey of German literature from the beginning to the death of Goethe . Besides many other philological treatises, Scherer wrote largely on Goethe (Aus Goethes Fruhzeit 1879; Aufsatze fiber Goethe, 1886), and took an active part in the foundation of the Goethe archives at Weimar . A small treatise on Poetik, a biography of Karl Miillenhoff, and two volumes of Kleine Schriften were published after his death . See V . Basch, Wilhelm Scherer et la philologie allemande (Paris, 1889), and the article by Eduard Schroder in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie .